Baldur's Gate 3 Is Still Struggling To Run Act 3 Even On PS5
08.09.2023 - 22:33
/ thegamer.com
/ Swen Vincke
Baldur's Gate 3 is a pretty flawless experience for the most part, with nary a glitch, bug, or drop in performance over the game's first two acts. However, those who have reached the final third of Baldur's Gate 3 will be aware of the performance issues that occur in Act 3 whenever you visit the titular city of Baldur's Gate. The increased density and population of the environments made even the highest end PCs sweat, and it's the exact same situation on PS5.
In a PS5 vs PC comparison of Baldur's Gate 3 by Digital Foundry (thanks GamesRadar), it's shown that the game's performance significantly drops whenever you're running around Baldur's Gate, no matter which mode you set the game to. On Perfromance Mode, the game runs at a steady 60fps during gameplay, dipping occasionally during cutscenes, but the performance tanks considerablly during Act 3. At its worst, the frame rate drops to a pretty dismal 20fps, and noticeable screen tearing can be seen when the frame do drop.
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It's the exact same scenario when playing in Quality Mode too. Baldur's Gate 3 runs pretty much flawlessly at a constant 30fps in Quality Mode, but the performance once again tanks during Act 3. It's a little bit better than in Performance Mode in that there seems absolutely zero screen tearing, but it's still a pretty noticable drop to around 20fps yet again.
Digital Foundry seems to believe that the cause of these issues is a combination of bugs and a CPU bottleneck in the area around the city of Baldur's Gate, due to how both modes drop to around 20fps regardless of visual quality. Obviously, this isn't too much of an issues for PC users, since there are potential workarounds and more powerful hardware, but those of you diving into Baldur's Gate 3 on PS5 will have to put up with it unless developer Larian Studios issues a new patch.
That's highly likely right now though, as Larian has been pumping out patches and hotfixes at almost startling speeds recently. Within a week, Larian saw feedback surrounding popular character Karlach and added an epilogue scene alongside new dialogue options to help address those concerns. The latest patch has even made Minthara a whole lot chattier, so it's possible that we could see Larian try and shape up the game's performance in Act 3 once it gets more important issues out of the way first.
In other Baldur's Gate 3 news, it was recently revealed that Larian has already started work on its next game, as co-founder and creative director Swen Vincke has said that he's "closing the chapter" of his career that was Baldur's Gate 3.
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